 So the United States has founded, the constitution is established, but as we know slavery is institutionalized in the South of the United, in the Southern States. So what extent from your readings was this challenged? Was this, were people upset about it? Was there real conflict going into let's say the 19th century? So this is one of those things. I wanna spend a good amount of time talking about this, but it was challenged from the very beginning and the challenge never let up. And I think that's something that's kind of, it seems to kind of fell on the wayside in the discussion of Americans history. It never sat right with different sectors of America. And it was always a hot topic for debate and immediately. And I wanna talk about, I always pose this question when talking about this topic, what made America so special? What makes America so unique? And we talk about, we have this phrase like the peculiar institution of slavery and what made it so peculiar and one of the ways to view that is that we have these founding documents, these founding principles that made that idea of slavery seem completely contradictory. And this was constantly pressed on. And it was always at war in the intellectual scene. So there were intellectuals debating this. I know in the South, there was a during the early part of the 19th century, there was a real intellectual effort to try to justify slavery, right? I mean, there were a lot of people, Calhoun and there were a lot of people waiting about the virtues of slavery and why this was necessary. Was there an opposition in the South or was the opposition really from intellectuals in the North? So let me set this up a little bit here. So one of the interesting things that when talking about this kind of from the framework of this first civil rights movement and one of the things that's key to think about this is, so early on in the North, what happens is a lot of the States start with abolishing some gradually, most of them gradually abolish slavery, especially like for example, the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 put slavery on a gradual abolishing path. And what you end up getting is this question of what does a post-slavery society look like? Pretty much the questions that we, that end up getting axed and dealt with in reconstruction, the same questions came up in the early part of America. So instantly you have this issue and a lot of these Northern States end up implementing these anti-black racist laws, registration for blacks to migrate, registration for blacks to get residency, blocking testimony so blacks weren't allowed to testify in court cases that had to do with whites. And yeah, all these things that I think, we kind of think of racist laws as Jim Crow stuff, but these things are kind of a little bit very extreme. And a lot of this served as a way to push away a lot of the black migration that was coming to the North from the South, because we have the South still having slave states. We obviously have a large influx. So one of the things to know about the founding is there was a large resurgence of escaped slaves, manumitting slaves. So nothing too crazy to like completely overthrown. Like completely overthrown. Yeah, but it was a significant uptick before as compared to before the revolution. So this is the context we're coming into. And when you have these declarations being made, these documents being posed and being ratified, you get what can be called, you get a group of people who are often referred to as the black founders. A lot of these early black Americans, free black Americans who pick up this language, pick up this language, pick up the founding principles of this nation and begin to ask this question. Why is there such a contradiction in of course the slave states, but even in the North, why do we have, why are we making racial distinctions in the law? This is completely against the principles of the country. And it's, it cannot stand. And to what extent do they use the language of individual rights? To what extent do they talk about individual rights as the founding principle of the country? I mean, of course, just like the founding of the country itself, it can be mixed in with a religious language, but it is explicit. We were talking about people who learn from, you know, the founding generation as well. So it is explicit. They're calling on natural rights theory. They're calling on this language as we are all created equal. They're explicitly saying rights. They're using this word right. Sometimes they use the phrase in reference to the privilege and immunities clause that's found in the constitution. They're calling explicitly on these words and on these concepts as a way to frame their arguments and pose their arguments and into the debate. Obviously, so one of the things that I like to mention to people that not a lot of people know, and this will come back later in the history, is that, you know, in 10 out of 13 of these colonies, blacks were a part of ratifying and voting for the constitution, which, you know. Okay. You know, interesting fact. They had a vote in 10 of the 13 of the colonies. Yeah, they were part of ratifying the constitution. So it's not like, you know, these things were happening and the black population was not aware of them. So they were very much engaged in the ideals and the ideas in the country. And that's why you get this kind of very, very, in the early republic, there's this strong sense of what can be termed as black Americanism, as a lot of people call it, because there's always this language of our founding fathers, our country. It's never this, it's very, of course you get a few sporadically, but it's never in a sense like we're completely done with this nation. It's always in recognition of these principles are right. They're true. They're, of course, in their language, they're Christian. You know, God created us all equal, but they are very in essence, very individualistic and very much in that mode. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support. 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